


Talent

by tei



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Family, Gen, M/M, Music, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, performance psychology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:48:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15819183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei/pseuds/tei
Summary: Mycroft was never atalentedviolinist. Not like Sherlock.





	Talent

**Author's Note:**

> Contains non-graphic descriptions of prostitution and drug use.

When Mycroft Holmes was thirteen, he sold his violin in secret. 

Well, it was supposed to be a secret. He figured Mummy probably wouldn’t notice the extra few thousand pounds being transferred to her account. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to keep the money. After all, Mummy had been the one to buy the violin, so she ought to get the money back from him selling it. He had just hoped she wouldn’t notice. 

She did notice, of course, and the bank teller was all too happy to inform her that it had been her eldest, dressed in his Sunday best and trying for all the world to look grown-up enough to be going to the bank by himself, who had made the deposit. “A very nice son you’ve got there, giving his babysitting money to his mum,” the man had beamed. “Very generous.” 

The fight that ensued was tedious and unnecessary and Mycroft was _bored_ of it from the moment Mummy had rounded on him and demanded “Mycroft, _why_? Why would you do such a thing without even _telling_ me?” 

She was not at all placated by his reassurance that he had even gone into the city to get the thing appraised before selling it, and thus was certain that he had gotten an excellent price for it, in fact maybe even more than she had paid for it--” to which she snapped “Not the point!” and promptly burst into tears.The tedium of the fight curled inside his belly tight and hot and by the time it was drawing to a close it had transformed into something else, something horrible and shameful expanding from deep inside of him wanting to get out, and he burst out--

“What’s the _point_! What, Mummy, is the point of my continuing to own a violin when my six-year-old brother can become almost as proficient as I ever was in the space of a meagre two years on the instrument?”

She took a deep breath and gathered him into her arms, murmuring “Oh, love,” into his hair, and Mycroft held on to her in reluctant admission of the fact that it did, still, feel good to be comforted by one’s mother, but that all the endearments in the world couldn’t change the fact that Sherlock had a talent that Mycroft could never match, and that was that. 

 

When Mycroft was sixteen, he was sent to the school therapist. 

It was ridiculous, really. He had only just gotten permission to skip the mathematics class offered in his form in favour of heading down to the local college for their offering. Why would he want to miss that hard-won privilege just to attend a funeral? His attendance wouldn’t change the fact of his being dead. Mummy would still be sad over Father it whether or not Mycroft attended, and Sherlock doubtless would have preferred to accompany Mycroft to his lecture, if the nine-year-old had the choice. 

Finally, the headmaster of the posh boarding school Father had insisted on his going to agreed not to send him home for the funeral against his will on the sole condition that he subject himself to an hour-long session with the school therapist. Mycroft agreed, recognizing that it was the best offer he was likely to get, and marked down the session in his calendar with a sigh. 

It turned out to be not quite as unpleasant as he had anticipated. The therapist, a middle-aged brunette who, Mycroft noticed, had recently reconciled with a long-ago ex, didn’t force him to talk about Father, which he had been dreading. She didn’t force him to talk about anything, in fact; merely allowed him to talk at length about the college mathematics he was learning and facts he could deduce about college life from his fellow students in the lecture hall. She seemed to enjoy hearing about his deductions, in fact, and didn’t even mind when, as a test of her tolerance, he turned his eye on her. 

“You’re right,” she said encouragingly. “Brian and I did just get back together. What you missed, though, is that we were married, not just together, all those years ago.”

Mycroft made a small noise of frustration. There was no mark of a wedding ring on her finger, wouldn’t have been after nearly a decade of not wearing it, but he now noticed that she still worried the place where her ring finger and palm joined with her thumb-- a nervous habit that she had picked up back when there was a ring to rotate around the digit. 

“I think,” she said, “What changed is that we both accepted change. Back when we got married, we both thought of the other as a fixed point-- a person with a certain set of skills, likes, dislikes, and talents. So we both panicked when we noticed the other one changing. It felt like, if we changed, perhaps we would become something other than what we each fell in love with.” 

“A peril of saddling yourself to one person for the rest of your life, I’d imagine,” Mycroft acknowledged. 

She smiled kindly at him, ignoring his caustic tone. “But see, that’s the thing, Mycroft,” she said. “The beauty of people is that we change. We’re supposed to change. Nobody is born the way they are as an adult.”

Mycroft thought back to when he was small, the first time he had caught a glimpse of his father’s shoes and known that he had been with another woman the night before. He remembered the time, a few years later, when he had noticed Sherlock staring thunderstruck at their father’s cufflinks, and known he was making the same deduction. He had pulled his brother aside and hissed, _if you tell mummy what you just saw, I will throw your violin in the creek, I swear to you, Sherlock._ Sherlock had just nodded silently, eyes wide, terrified. The family stayed together. Mycroft told himself it was better for Sherlock to grow up with a father, even if— well. 

“I think,” he murmured, “I may have been born like this.”

The school therapist just smiled at him again and asked if there was anything else he wanted to talk about. He was surprised by the reluctance with which he said no, there wasn’t, but he was working his way through some particularly complex articles on theoretical physics and wanted to finish up before he lost the thread, so he shook his head and stood up to go. On the way out, she pressed a book into his hand, and said that he could keep it, she had plenty. 

He put the book on his shelf and intended to forget about it. That night, though, he couldn’t sleep; common enough, although not as common as it had been back before he had gone off to school and was still subject to Sherlock’s sneaking into his room to try to provoke him into entertaining him when _Sherlock_ couldn’t sleep, which was always. He sighed, an in a moment of whimsy, opened the book the therapist had given him; a small hardcover tome with the title of _The Talent Code._

It appeared to be commercial drivel, written for people who had never been exceptional at anything. Mycroft was nearly ready to give up on it and start in on an analysis of a chess game he’d witnessed recently, when he got to a section all about a music school in the woods. 

_Meadowmount is located a five-hour drive north of Manhattan in the green quilt of the Adirondack Mountains. Its founder, renowned violin teacher Ivan Galamian, chose the site for the same reason New York State builds most of its prisons in this area: it’s remote, inexpensive, and extremely quiet. Meadowmount is defined by the camp’s storied alumni, and by a simple equation that has become the school’s de facto motto: in seven weeks, most students will learn a year’s worth of material._

It was exactly the kind of place he always wished Father had allowed them to send Sherlock. Perhaps, now that he was gone, Mycroft could intervene on his brother’s behalf. He read on, intrigued for his brother’s sake. Sherlock deserved to go to a place like that. A place for kids who were special, talented.

Only… that wasn’t how the book was describing it. The kids at the camp, the author seemed to be saying, were no more special of talented than any other kids. 

Mycroft became slowly engrossed as he read how perfectly normal kids first became emotionally invested in improving their skills for their own sake, then how the Meadowmount teachers showed them how to improve, hour by painstaking hour. As much as he would have liked to have believed that Sherlock’s talent had sprung up, fully formed, the moment he touched a violin— now that he was reading a detailed description of the process, he could remember Sherlock’s early years of violin study. The tiny boy had barricaded himself in the sitting room for hours, often playing the same sequence of two or three notes over and over again. When Mycroft had demanded to know what on earth he was doing, Sherlock had insisted that he was actually changing something every time he repeated the sequence, even if it was too small to notice. “One variable at a time,” he had announced proudly. “Science. Like you taught me.” He had kept a notebook full of unsteady, childish scribbling that was supposedly the results of his violin experiments.

Now, reading a description of deep practice that tracked almost exactly with what Sherlock had spent so many hours doing, Mycroft had a realization. 

Sherlock had been a better violinist at six than Mycroft had been at thirteen because he had simply _practiced_ more, and practiced better.

Well, that was embarrassing. 

His first thought was that he needed to tell Sherlock. His younger brother was an irritating twat most of the time, and would probably only roll his eyes and poke fun at Mycroft for this revelation, but he was still the only person on the planet that Mycroft could really _talk_ to. 

Then, he had a better idea. It would take a bit longer-- well, a lot longer-- but it would be worth it. 

He got out of bed, dressed and stole into the school’s library, kept unlocked. He spent several minutes perusing the options, then pulled a beginning piano method book off the shelf at random, deciding they were all perfectly adequate to get him started. 

He made his way to the music wing of the school, which was locked, not that that was a problem for him. He chose a practice room with a keyboard equipped with headphones-- no reason for anyone else to have to overhear him as a rank beginner-- and then settled in, contemplating the years ahead.

 

When Mycroft was eighteen, he packed his childhood room in boxes and had it shipped to London. He hardly needed every book he had ever possessed in his college dorm room, of course, but he had no intentions of ever leaving the city again once he moved there for school, and it seemed like as good a time as any to do it. 

Besides, Sherlock was beginning to develop an interest in solving crime, and against Mummy’s protests, Mycroft gifted his brother his old room as a kind of study. He did so, however, only after he’d covered one wall entirely in corkboard-- for pictures of crime scenes, he’d explained to their mother’s horrified face and Sherlock’s delighted one-- and one wall in chalkboard paint, for Sherlock to scribble madly on and gesture at while he explained his deductions to an imaginary audience. Sherlock, a thorough preteen terror, would have sulkily denied that he did any such thing, if Mycroft had said that bit out loud. As it was, though, he beamed at the chalkboard wall, and Mycroft could feel him vibrating in excitement in a way that he knew from long experience meant _thank you._

He had another going-away gift for Sherlock, though-- or rather, an I’m-going-away gift. “Get your violin out,” he said, butterflies roiling in his stomach. Self-doubt was beginning to churn through him. After all, the book had said that it took ten thousand hours of deliberate, focused practice to become an expert at something. Mycroft calculated that he had spent only three thousand, six hundred and eighty-six hours over the past two years practicing the piano. He knew he was decent-- the best pianist at his school, in fact, and in demand to play accompaniment for all of the serious music students in the area. But that didn’t mean he felt himself good enough to accompany _Sherlock._

Sherlock was rosining his bow, looking at Mycroft expectantly. He sat down at the grand piano in Mummy’s sitting room, the one that Father had insisted was necessary for company but had only ever been played a few times, and Sherlock’s eyebrows raised. 

“I didn’t know you were musical, brother mine,” said Sherlock. 

Mycroft took a deep breath. “I wasn’t,” he said. “But I’ve been practicing. I hope that some day I may truly be of use to you as a pianist, Sherlock, but for now…” he shrugged, trying to feel as nonchalant as he looked about his own developing abilities, and turned to the keyboard. 

He placed his fingers on the keys and gently fell into the opening of a Bach sonata he knew Sherlock knew-- the first movement of the F minor, a peaceful, lilting melody both sad and hopeful at the same time. Sherlock’s eyes widened momentarily, at the recognition of the piece and at the fact of Mycroft’s playing it. 

Mycroft’s fingers felt a little clumsier than usual, his brother’s scrutiny making him nervous. He called to mind what his school’s music teacher had told him the last time he’d confessed to frustration that he played so much better in practice than in performance: _“Mycroft, this may seem unbelievable to you right now, but please listen to me: the sooner you learn to accept and love your own mistakes in performance, the sooner you will be able to play to your full potential in front of an audience. Every mistake is an opportunity to accept and love yourself more; and the more you accept and love yourself, the better you will play.”_ A few years ago, Mycroft would have dismissed this kind of advice as an absolutely revolting level of sentiment; the fact that attempting to carry it out actually _had_ significantly improved his performance abilities sat inside of him a little bit uncomfortably. Still, it seemed undeniably true that self-acceptance produced better results than self-recrimination, so Mycroft tried to give himself permission to make mistakes in front of Sherlock, and relaxed into the melody. 

Sherlock raised his bow slowly, reverently, in preparation for his entry: a low tone that seemed to join the piano part almost imperceptibly, then rise slowly to gently take over their intermingled sounds. Mycroft found himself listening to Sherlock almost more than he was concentrating on his own playing, but it didn’t trip him up; in fact, he found that it was easier to play his own part when he allowed himself to inhabit Sherlock’s playing. He let his eyes drift to his brother’s face, his eyes closed and the sharp angles of him softened by the music. 

Mycroft recalled nights spent in the darkened music wing of the school, frequently swearing in frustration at his own ineptitude. Those days were far from over, he was sure. But if it was in service of _this_... of his getting to be _with_ Sherlock, to truly be close to his mad, prickly, brilliant younger brother… he was almost looking forward to it. 

They played through the entire sonata together. When they finished, the lilting step of the final vivace fading, Sherlock lowered his violin slowly and just stared. 

It wasn’t the first time Mycroft had surprised Sherlock-- he _was_ the more astute one, in most situations-- but Mycroft thought it might be the most precious. 

He closed the lid on the piano, and stepped across the room, leaning in close next to Sherlock. Mycroft kissed him gently on the forehead and murmured, “Come visit me in London, brother mine.”

 

When Mycroft was twenty-five, he found his younger brother sucking cocks in an alley for cash. 

He’d gone looking for Sherlock when he had been incommunicando for two weeks. It wasn’t unusual for Sherlock to try to ignore his family, of course, but Mycroft had always been able to contact him, and usually a few well-placed text messages about Mummy worrying were enough to convince the brat to confirm that he was still alive. 

This time, Mycroft had shown up at Sherlock’s flat to find it strewn with syringes and pills and its occupant absent-- had been for two days, Mycroft deduced quickly. After that, he wasn’t exactly hard to find. 

Sherlock was high out of his fucking mind. “Mycroft,” he slurred. “What a pleasure. Get out of my fucking life.”

His trousers were ripped at the knees. He stumbled and nearly fell, holding onto a wall for support before Mycroft managed to get an arm around him and hold tight enough that he couldn’t thrash away. 

Sherlock was vicious when he was high, and Mycroft was the preferred target. Mycroft always tried to reassure himself that the only reason he bore the brunt of Sherlock’s drug-crazed attacks was because in some deep-down part of his mind Sherlock knew he could handle it. That was what he told himself, anyway. If it was true, he hoped Sherlock was right. 

It took three days-- three miserable days of Sherlock shivering in his bedroom and occasionally shouting obscenities at him while Mycroft donned rubber gloves and tried to bring some semblance of normalcy to the flat-- before Sherlock’s hands had stopped shaking to the extent that he could hold anything at all, let alone a Stradivarius. More than enough time for Mycroft to purchase a small upright piano and have it installed in the sitting room of the flat. 

When Sherlock emerged, looking pale and gaunt and embarrassed, his eyes swept around his newly decent flat and landed on it. 

“Food first,” said Mycroft firmly. “Would you like toast or chicken soup?” He had read quite a lot of parenting books, for a man who knew for a fact he would never procreate, and knew that a choice between two options was more likely to get Sherlock to eat than an open-ended enquiry as to preferences. 

Sherlock hesitated, his mouth twisting unpleasantly. “Toast,” he muttered sullenly, slumping onto the couch. 

Once Sherlock ate, they played. Sherlock was still uncoordinated, his fingers skittering across the fingerboard like they were trying to run away from him and his bow too unsteady to manage delicate note endings. Mycroft chose the repertoire to suit, focusing on uptempo movements that Sherlock could play with a firm bow stroke and not too much frustration: the fourth movement from the B minor sonata, the second movement from the A major, the fifth from the G major. All Bach; it had always been Bach with them, and although Mycroft would have played something else if Sherlock asked, there was something about the ritual of Bach that served to ground them both. 

Mycroft stayed at Sherlock’s flat for three more days, and played until his fingers were sore. When he left, he knew for a fact that there were no drugs in the flat. He also knew for a fact it wouldn’t last. There would be a next time. 

He kept practicing.

When Sherlock texted him, many years later, to let him know that the piano he had bought had caught fire in the aftermath of an experiment, and that Sherlock was being evicted from the Montague Street flat as a result, Mycroft just replied that if Sherlock needed a rehearsal pianist, he was welcome at Mycroft’s place in Belgravia any time. Sherlock never responded. 

 

When Mycroft was thirty-four, Sherlock found a flatmate. 

John Watson was sturdy and handsome and kind. He refused Mycroft’s suggestion that he keep an eye on Sherlock for pay, which Mycroft grudgingly approved of. Then he shot a man for Sherlock, which Mycroft definitely approved of. 

He texted Sherlock _Don’t fuck this up for yourself, brother_ and as per usual, Sherlock ignored him. Mycroft put it out of his mind as much as he could. He and Sherlock went through phases like this often, where every communication between them was filled with friction like the ghastly shriek of a cloth over rosined strings. Something would happen to force them together again, sooner or later. 

When Sherlock’s new flat blew up, Mycroft grabbed the nearest thing he could find that might interest Sherlock and headed over. Andrew West, found dead on the tracks at Battersea station; top-secret missile defense plans on a USB stick in his possession. 

When he entered, Sherlock was alone, surrounded by rubble. He was clutching his violin to his chest. 

“It’s unharmed?” said Mycroft. 

Sherlock turned, his eyes flickering up and down Mycroft’s body. He allowed it, remembering that Sherlock had been fixated on Mycroft’s weight ever since they were children; he seemed to have believed it the only possible way he could ever get a leg up on his more intelligent older brother. Sherlock had always completely overlooked the fact that he had a much better weapon to lord over Mycroft, had he ever wished to, which he was holding carefully in his left hand. 

He didn’t, though. Even as children, before Mycroft had thrown himself at the piano with the ferocity of a man drowning, Sherlock had never made any indication that he even remembered that Mycroft had once played the violin. And once Mycroft had offered up his in-progress skills as a pianist, Sherlock had never once been unkind about the rough edges of Mycroft’s playing. So Mycroft was perfectly willing to accept the occasional needling check-up on his diet if it meant that music could remain the thing they shared. 

Mycroft looked around. It was his first proper look at the place, from the inside and not a CCTV camera. There was an enormous hole in the wall, and bullet-marks in the shape of a grinning yellow face, and chemistry projects strewn about in ways that were frankly unsafe-- but he could feel the _goodness_ , the rightness of this place for Sherlock, radiating from every inch of it. 

“A pity about the piano,” he said. 

Sherlock threw himself down in a chair. “You have a case for me?” He was avoiding Mycroft’s eyes, and everything about his tense musculature and curled-in posture was defensive and standoffish. The sole exception was the violin in his hands, which he had started absent-mindedly plucking in undulating minor chords. 

Mycroft listened to the soft vibrations of the strings, and heard in them _I’m glad you came._

“I have,” he said, and handed over the file. Sherlock flipped through it quickly and handed it back to him, making no comment. The arpeggios changed, flipped into the Dorian mode and grew wider, spanning several octaves, and Mycroft knew it was a _yes._

There were footsteps on the stairs, panicked, and John crashed into the room. He stood for a second, staring, and Sherlock greeted him with a clipped “John.”

John fussed over the flat, and Sherlock pretended that he had already forgotten about the explosion, and Mycroft realized with a start that Sherlock, ever dramatic, was showing off for John Watson. 

So he wasn’t entirely surprised when Sherlock spat at him, “I can’t.”

Mycroft suddenly was struck by the urge to prolong this as long as possible, just to marvel at the spectacle of his brother so utterly laid low by another human being. Two could play at this, of course, so he pushed back caustically and endured another diet jab before turning to the blond man commanding Sherlock’s attention like a sun radiating from the corner of the room and said, “Perhaps you can get through to him, John.”

Sherlock continued plucking, fragmented now, random-sounding notes that were either as truly random as he could muster, or some sort of code that Mycroft would have to devote some time to later. John frowned and hmm-d in all the right places as Mycroft left the file for the case with him, and Sherlock ushered him out of the room with an aggressive, nasty series of arpeggiated sixths. It sounded like _thank you._

Mycroft almost laughed as soon as he exited the building, and refrained only for the sake of the harried phalanx of emergency workers swirling around the front door. He couldn’t, however, help pulling out his phone as soon as he was out of the area:

 _I appreciate your help on this. And I know you’ll pretend you don’t care what I think, but for the record, I think he’s wonderful for you._

 

When Mycroft was forty-one, he knew he needed to die. 

“Today we are soldiers,” he said. “Soldiers die for their country. I regret, Doctor Watson, that privilege is now yours.”

“Shit,” said John. “He’s right.”

Sherlock was looking at Mycroft like he had maybe never loved him more, like maybe he could die of how much he loved his brother in this moment, like maybe he would. 

Mycroft was still alive. 

“Put this stupid little man out of all our misery,” he insisted, and John just squared his shoulders and stared straight ahead and God, Mycroft was glad that his precious, wonderful brother would get to keep John Watson. 

In the end, they lived. The first time Sherlock played with Eurus, Mycroft watched over the security feed. It felt like looking into some very twisted mirror; siblings separated by a sheet of unbreakable glass, twisting melodies together in the only conversation they’ll ever exchange. 

When he saw Sherlock off at the airport that night, he leaned in to him, not an embrace, just a closeness. Unable to be anything but sentimentally grateful for the ability to speak to Sherlock, to hear him, to touch him. He resolved not to squander the privilege. 

 

On the morning of Sherlock Holmes’ thirty-fifth birthday, he was roused by the sound of the doorbell. 

“I’ll get it,” he murmured to John, whose eyelids had barely cracked open at the sound. 

He crept out of the bedroom, smiling quietly at the sight of his husband curled up in the covers with their daughter asleep in a crib by the foot of the bed. 

“Delivery,” said the man at the door when Sherlock nudged it open. He glanced back towards the truck he had parked outside, blocking half of Baker St to traffic, then peered into the entranceway of the building. “Blimey,” he sighed, “Mikey ‘Olmes weren’t kidding about the stairs.” His polo shirt read “Abbott Piano Movers” in stitching over the left breast.

Sherlock smiled widely into the morning sun, and found the doorstop to wedge the door open. “I’m afraid he wasn’t,” he said. “Please, come in.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVemQvcLy64) is the first sonata that Mycroft plays with Sherlock.


End file.
